THE "CRAFTSPERSON": NATURE, ORDER, DEGENERATION, AND PRESERVATION AT INDIA'S NATIONAL HANDICRAFTS AND HANDLOOMS MUSEUM

MATTHEW A. COOK

Submitted: Sat, 30 Dec 1995 01:56:36 -0800 (PST)

ABSTRACT

There is a historical tendency to describe social phenomena as being stable. At the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum this done through descriptive metaphors concerning nature and order. Stability based on these concepts assumes change to be a move from perfection toward imperfection. This is illustrated by the desire at the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum to preserve their subject the "Craftsproducer" before they become obsolete. This preservation attitude carries with it a sense retrospection that laments the loss of a "good" country; a place where stable and authentic social contacts and crafts production were once possible. This sense retrospection has been identified as the "ethnographic pastoral," and is a trope for the Garden of Eden. I ask, "Is it surprising to find a biblical reference in a museum on Indian "craftsproducers"?" I answer, "No, considering the concept of a museum is a Western construct, and two, that the crafts museum's curators are from disciplines (Anthropology and Indology) whose ideologies, like those of Christianity, are deeply rooted in Western experience."

THE ARRIVAL TROPE

Sometime ago, I took a tour of Delhi. It included the usual tourist spots: the Jama Masjid, the Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb, etc. Besides these places, the tour also included the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum. When the tourist bus got to the museum, I got off and found myself at the museum's entrance, which was covered with a thatched palm leaf roof. At the sight of the thatched roof, I couldn't help but feel that I was about to leave the dirty chaotic streets of Delhi for some other world. However, exactly what kind of world lay beyond the entrance I did not know.

As I entered the museum, my eyes met a surprising sight: a "fake" Indian village. I say "fake" because, despite the fact I recognized it as a village, it didn't contain any of the smells, or noises, that I have come to associate with Indian villages during my travels in India. For example, there was no open sewer (ironically, I later found out this "village" had one of the cleaner western style toilets I've seen in India), nor dozens of children screaming, "penlo!" 1 Furthermore, my feeling of "fakeness" was enhanced by the village architecture which came not from any particular geographic area, but from all over India.

After walking about the ersatz village for some time, I proceeded to the building that housed the museum. As I meandered through its galleries looking at displayed objects and reading descriptions of them, I felt a growing feeling of deja vu . However, while in the museum I could not figure out why I felt this way.

After finishing the tour, and upon returning home, I began to reflect, "Why had I experienced that sense of deja vu ?" The next morning, as I sat at my desk and began reading an analysis of themes found in ethnographic texts, it occurred to me that some of the same themes had occurred in National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum. This explained my deja vu : As a reflexive thinker I was familiar with ethnographic themes, and I had cued into them at the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum.

INTRODUCTION

Ethnographic writing and museums are similar: both tell stories. The two simply differ in how they present their respective stories: the ethnographer arranges words on a piece of paper, while a museum usually arranges objects in rooms. Stories, be they produced in museums or on the pages of books, involve creativity. Therefore the sort of story, or stories, told depends on who, or whom, is/are telling them. For example, stories told by the writing anthropologist will differ from those of the natural scientist. Similarly, the stories told by those arranging crafts museums are different form those in natural history museums. Story telling is, despite what a few over egoed individuals might say, never 100% new (Stillenger 1991: 182-186). This is why the term "genre" exists: to describe different stories which have themes in common.

The National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, and ethnography can be thought of as falling under the same "genre": both utilize some of the same themes when telling their stories. The main body of this paper examines the story being told at the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum about its "subject": the "craftsproducer." It identifies two major themes in the story. Then, through examples from ethnography and folkloristics, I show how these same themes have also historically occurred in anthropology. The paper concludes by suggesting a common source for these themes.

NATURE AND ORDER

Socio-cultural phenomena are often represented by assigning juxtaposing categories of description. For example, categories like homogeneous/heterogeneous, traditional/modern, agrarian/industrial, static/dynamic, etc., have been commonly used to describe phenomena.2 These binaries produce the impression a phenomena can only be associated with one of two sides of the binary: either "them" (the subject), or "us" (the author(s)).

At the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, the "craftsperson" falls into this descriptive scheme: the "craftsperson" is associated with "them," not "us." One important way museum authorities differentiate themselves from their subject is by labeling craftspersons rural folk:

They [crafts] are the art of the settled village and countryside, of people...with central concern with the earth and harvesting. (Jayakar 1989: 8)

The label "rural" derives meaning only when juxtaposed to its binary opposite: urban. This rural/urban binary proposes two neatly labeled, air tight compartments, and gives the impression that each category is "fixed" and mutually exclusive; with the urban museum authorities on one side, and rural "craftsproducers" on the other. Under this scheme the rural "craftsproducers" ("them") are associated with a series of characteristics that occur in opposition to those associated with the category "urban."

One such characteristic, is the "craftsproducers" close association with nature. This is communicated through the language the museum uses to describe "craftsproducers" with. For example, the museum catalog states the traditions on which crafts production are based are "in-tune" with nature:

The ancient craft traditions of India reveal the anonymous nature of creation; of direct perceptive skills and discipline as integral to the creative act, form as born of the right relationship of matter to space and energy. (Jayakar 1989: 8)

The "close to nature" theme is further invoked in the museum by comparing crafts traditions to natural objects. For example, plants:

[the goal of crafts production is] to explore the roots [italic mine] of these traditions... (Jayakar 1989: 8)

The creator-craftsman [in his/her product]... sees unending space and the tiny seed [italics mine]... (Jayakar 1989: 8)

This theme continues to be prevalent when describing the act of crafts production. According to the museum, "craftsproducers," like nature, adhere to "norms":

It is necessary to examine the norms [italics mine] that have molded the craftsperson's vision and has dictated their vocabulary. (Jayakar 1989: 8)

These "norms," like the laws of nature, have both longevity and order:

The patterns that the crafts traditions in India were to take and which were to survive for 5,000 years. (Jayakar 1989: 8)

What made an art object was rupa or shape, pramana or proportion and varna or colour. Perfection of form came to be based on certain rule of measurement of length and breadth. These rules of measurement were applicable not only to architecture and sculpture but to functional objections like textiles, gold ornaments, mule chariots, and weapons. (Jayakar 1989: 8)

The portrayal of the craftsproducer as following "timeless and unchanging" traditions is not an uncommon type of description. Anthropologists have long been describing their subjects in a similar manner. Anthropologists to achieve the "timeless and unchanging" effect have used system metaphors in their ethnographies. System metaphors are based on nature. Anthropologist/Historian Ronald Inden, in Imagining India, states system metaphors describe,

... a system [that] consists of hierarchically arranged levels of discrete, interdependent parts... like the solar system: heavenly bodies consist of solid masses which in turn consists of molecules, which consist of atoms... A natural system is characterized by mutual exclusion among its parts. Just as different objects do not occupy the same space... they do not overlap. (Inden 1990: 12)

The concept of nature implied through system metaphors is, like the crafts-producer, "timeless and unchanging." After all, what can give the impression of being more "natural," as well as "timeless and unchanging," than the solar system?3

If the "timeless and unchanging" descriptive themes found at the museum, and in ethnography are similar concepts, how does one account then for their concurrence in such disparate contexts? Inden states that the concepts of nature and order have a long history in the social sciences: there has been a "long standing quest to write a science of the human world as a machine or self-regulating system" (Inden 1990: 2). Inden believes that these descriptive themes form core elements in the academic writings on India:

We should not think here that Indology [the study of India] was marginal to the project of making the human sciences in the image of the natural sciences and assume that Smith [Vincent Smith, the first Idologist] has had recourse to his machine metaphor merely as a stylistic device or to make what he had to say sound vaguely more scientific. (Inden 1990: 13)

Inden's quote reveals that the concepts of nature and order have not only been prevalent in descriptions of India, but hegemonic. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine how the themes of nature and order both ended up in the museum and ethnography: they were placed there by those who write descriptions of India -- Indologists and Anthropologists. This proposal gains even more legitimacy when one considers the fact that the museum retains academics from these fields, and claims to be a repository of knowledge for these fields (Aggarwala and Jain 1989: 9).

DEGENERATION AND PRESERVATION

When conceptualizing and describing "craftsproducers" as adhering to an order based on nature, some very important elements get ignored. The most important of these is the concept of time. My question is, "What occurs to people whose lives adhere a supposedly natural order as they encounter new phenomena over time?" According to the crafts museum they "break" down, and fail to be relevant. The museum catalog states:

In the last five decades India has witnessed a major revolution in her social and technological environment, resulting in a challenge to the crafts person's and their skill. Question that then arises is, are craft skills relevant today? (Jayakur 1989: 8)

The paragraph by asking if "craftsproducers" are becoming, in the face of changing times, irrelevant is labeling craft-producers as "survivals." "Survivals" in this particular context refer to socio-cultural phenomena which, over time, have lost their original meanings and functions (Sanderson 1990: 15). The concept of a "survival" carries with it a sense "extinction on the horizon." This is due to the fact that "survivals" arrive at a later point of history mortally wounded of their meanings and functions, therefore give the impression that "death" can not to far behind.4 The museum believes that the crafts-producers are quickly becoming "survivals," in the face of temporal changes brought by modernization. This clear from the strong language that is used in the museum concerning preservation:

We hope that it will symbolize the urgency of the need for the preservation [italics mine] of rural technology and traditional aesthetic values in a rapidly [italics mine] industrializing India. (Aggarwala and Jain 1989: 10)

The ideas was .... to create a museum of art or ethnography with a view to preservation [italics mine].(Aggarwala and Jain 1989: 9)

Portraying the very existence of the craftsproducer as being under threat by temporal changes is not a description found only in the museum. Anthropologists have historically described their subjects in a similar manner. For example, at the turn of the century it seemed as if Native American cultures had become "survivals" which might go "extinct." This attitude was held for a variety of reasons, but primary among them was that the Native American population (like the craftsproducer) could not stand the changes that came with "modernization" (i.e. changes in demographic settlement patterns, concepts of property ownership, and environmental exploitation techniques). The belief that the Native American cultures may go extinct resulted in the concept of preservation becoming a driving force among the work of North American anthropologists. Notable among these was Alfred Kroeber, whose works on the Californian Native American population are now part of the anthropological cannon.

The belief that cultures can become extinct in the face of changes brought by time, and must be preserved in ethnography, is not uncommon in anthropological literature. Due to the textual reoccurrence of this belief, the term "salvage motif" has been coined to describe it (Marcus and Fischer 1986: 24). The "salvage motif" is not only found in anthropological discourse, but has also figured prominently in the study of folklore. In folkloristics the attitude of "go out and record the natives before they disappear" has been slightly modified into "go out and record folklore before it disappears along with the natives." This attitude is best seen among the practitioners of the Historical-Geographical method, which flourished during the same time period as Alfred Kroeber.

Practitioners of the Historical-Geographical method began the process of preservation by attempting to discover, by tracing back through time, the "original" version of folklore:

Just as ethnographers carefully sifted through unavoidable details obviously only recently added through acculturative contact in an attempt to discover the pure unadulterated original native culture, so practitioners of the Finish historical-geographic method sought to work backwards through the unfortunate changes (or, in Thompson's terms, the mistakes and errors) in order to find the pure unadulterated original ur-form. (Dundes 1969: 9) The underlying premise illustrated above is the assumption that one's subject "degenerates" over time, on its way to becoming extinct (Dundes 1969: 8). As a result of this, the need for preservation arises.

CONCLUSION

There is a historical tendency to describe social phenomena as being stable. At the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, and in anthropology this done through descriptive metaphors concerning nature and order. However, stability based on these concepts assumes change to be a move from perfection toward imperfection (Dundes 1969: 8). This is illustrated by the desire at the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, and in anthropology to preserve their subjects before they become obsolete. These preservation attitudes carry with them a sense retrospection that seems to lament the loss of a "good" country; a place where stable and authentic social contact and crafts production were once possible. James Clifford, in "On Ethnographic Allegory," calls this sense retrospection the "ethnographic pastoral" (Clifford 1986: 113). Through literary analysis, he identifies "ethnographic pastoral" as having a long history in academic descriptions, as well as ultimately being a reference to the Garden of Eden (Clifford 1986: 113). Is it surprising to find such a reference in a museum on Indian "craftsproducers?" No. To understand this answer, one must keep two factors in mind: one, the concept of a museum is a Western construct (Karp 1990: 12), and two, that the crafts museum's curators are from the disciplines of Anthropology and Indology, both of whose ideologies are deeply rooted in Western experience (Harris 1968 and Inden 1991). Keeping these factors in mind, it is not lurid to suggest the possibility of biblical references seeping into a museum on Indian "craftsproducers."

NOTES

1Roughly translated from Hindi as, "Gimme a pen."

2For further examples of this descriptive phenomena please refer to the influence of Robert Redfield's Great and Little traditions on McKim Marriott (1955) and Milton Singer (1972), as well as the work of Edward Sapir (1949) on Genuine and Spurious culture.

3Metaphors based on nature can however be misleading. For an example, see the work of Ronald Inden (1990).

4I myself do not adhere to this type of thinking which is overly enmeshed in E.B. Tylor's defunct theory of cultural evolution. This fact, however, does not render the concept an ineffective analytic tool in the context of the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum.

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